


As It Spirals

by wynnebat



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Break Up, Friends to Lovers, Future Fic, Light Angst, M/M, Minor Lydia Martin/Stiles Stilinski, Pining, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-16
Updated: 2018-06-16
Packaged: 2019-05-24 07:14:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14950046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wynnebat/pseuds/wynnebat
Summary: “Of course I love you,” Stiles says. He wants to roll his eyes, but refrains because it’s a serious moment. Another fight in the long line of fights and breakups they’ve had. They’re passionate people, he and Lydia. “Out of everything, how could you possibly doubt I love you? I’ve never had to think about it.”“Maybe you should,” Lydia says, carefully slipping her hand out of his own.“Lyds—”“No, really, Stiles. Think about it.”





	As It Spirals

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a prompt by anonymous.

Lydia says it gently, for all that the words are the final nail in the coffin of their relationship. It’s risen up like a zombie a couple times throughout the years, the two of them always deciding to have a go at it before they break up again. Each time, it feels like they’re perfect for each other, and each time it’s different reasons that they aren’t. It’s the timing, then it’s stress, then it’s their locations, then they’re in the same place again after so long and Lydia says, “If you really loved me, there wouldn’t be a choice.”

“Of course I love you,” Stiles says. He wants to roll his eyes at that, but refrains because it’s a serious moment. Another fight in the long line of fights and breakups they’ve had. They’re passionate people, he and Lydia. “Out of everything, how could you possibly doubt I love you? I’ve never had to think about it.”

“Maybe you should,” she says, carefully slipping her hand out of his own.

“Lyds—”

“No, really, Stiles. Think about it.”

She’s resolute and beautiful and the last thing Stiles wants to do is think, but he agrees. Lydia lets him lounge around in her apartment while thinking, then hits him with a pillow when he falls asleep. It’s cozy, her place. Stiles loves it down to the way she’d spent three weeks picking out paint chips and samples to get her walls the perfect shade. He loves the spacious kitchen and the way he keeps his second favorite mug there and the weirdly-scented soaps from Lydia’s ill-fated attempt at soap-making as a hobby. The place is a few blocks down from the station; Stiles can just walk to work whenever he stays the night. It’s an objectively good place to live. Lydia’s an objectively good person to love. Before long, he gets bored of sitting around and heads off. He doesn’t try going in for a kiss.

Home is a house on the other side of town, a gravel path leading into the preserve. It’s Hale land but not the location of the old Hale house, which Derek had decided to rebuild. It’s rare that Peter steps foot there, preferring to invite his nephew to his own place for Hale family bonding and/or stupidity, but it happens. There are two more rooms than Stiles thinks Peter will ever actually need, but otherwise it’s a fair enough place.

More than fair, if he’s honest.

Stiles has his own set of keys, which he hangs on a hook next to the door. Peter’s keys are already on the hook next to his own. Stiles has his own section of shoe rack in the closet, about a fourth the size of Peter’s section because really, who needs that many shoes? He has his own room, his own spaces in the house, and the rest of the time, he and Peter exist in casual harmony with each other. They have ever since Stiles moved in here after graduating college. It seemed like the thing to do at the time; he wanted more independence than living with his dad would’ve allowed, he wasn’t dating anyone, and his friend had a spare room.

Stiles can’t bring himself to wish he’d never moved in with Peter, because he’d never wish away the nights of forcing Star Trek down Peter’s throat and two years of elaborate April Fool’s Day pranks and the sheer companionship, but fuck. Maybe if he hadn’t moved in with Peter—who’s he kidding, definitely—this latest argument wouldn’t have had to happen.

Still feeling weirdly melancholy, Stiles heats up some leftovers and heads upstairs. The door to the master bedroom is halfway open, so Stiles barges in. Peter’s like an old man, sitting up in bed with two of the throw pillows behind his back and a book in his lap. Stiles finds it charming as hell. All his friend needs is some reading glasses and a full pajama set instead of a bare chest and he’ll be set.

He flops onto the bed with a great dramatic sigh. “I’m back.”

“Really?” Peter asks, putting his bookmark in and closing his book shut. It’s silly, but Stiles can’t help the way he loves having Peter’s full attention even after years of friendship. He blames it on past friends left best unthought of. Looking at Stiles’ plate, Peter says, “If you spill that on the covers, you’re taking them over to the dry-cleaning place. The good one.”

Stiles makes a face. “They hate me there. It’s not my fault we got attacked by round two of the hunt while I was wearing my best suit.”

“Your best suit is an abomination that never should’ve left the clearance rack of Walmart.”

“I’ll have you know it was the clearance rack of Target,” Stiles sniffs. “Much better selection.”

“My mistake,” Peter drawls, then steals Stiles’ bowl and fork. “I thought you were staying at Lydia’s.”

“I was,” Stiles says. He wonders if Peter ever gets sick of his and Lydia’s constant yo-yo-ing. Peter complains about what he calls their obnoxiously romantic moments, but he’s been there through all their breakups. The first one, he’d been a sarcastic presence in the corner of Derek’s loft. Stiles had glared a lot. The second breakup, Stiles had called to get information on the fae from him and ended up unloading instead. By the third breakup, Peter was Stiles’ first call. Now… now Stiles just says, “I keep saying you need to get a TV in here.”

Peter lets him avoid the subject with a roll of his eyes and a dig at Stiles’ sleeping habits. He lets Stiles drag him a door over to his own bedroom, where there is a TV with a Netflix subscription that Stiles finally pays for himself like a proper adult instead of mooching off his dad’s. Peter lets him do a lot of things, really. Maybe that’s the problem.

Stiles falls asleep in the middle of the movie. He can’t remember Peter leaving, but he wakes up alone in his room, a phantom warmth on the sheets next to him that must just be the sun’s rays. It’s nine on a weekend; Peter must be off on a run. In a few minutes, Stiles will get up and head downstairs, where he’ll make enough breakfast for the both of them and try not to stare at Peter’s form when his friend gets back. He’s in a relationship, okay, but he’s not dead. Maybe he’ll use the cat-shaped sunny side up egg mold. He hasn’t done that in a while and he knows Peter finds it hilarious. Peter always smiles at him in that fond, smirky way of his. Stiles can’t remember if Peter’s planning anything else today, but he hopes Peter’s finally decided to adopt a cat like he’s kept saying he wants to do. Stiles will be only too happy to pet every animal open to petting at the shelter.

That’s another reason right there. Peter’s getting a cat. Maybe a black cat for proper supernatural aesthetic, or a ginger cat because those are cute as shit, or like any other cat. How is Stiles ever supposed to leave when there’s a cat in the picture?

Lydia’s words come back to him and he sighs a lot at the ceiling.

He thinks about it. He thinks about it some more. Peter eventually comes by to pull him out of his moping, giving Stiles a concerned look and making the matter worse by saying he wants to check out the shelter today. Stiles goes with him because he’s weak. So weak. He watches kittens crawl all over Peter and makes faces into the turtle tank to deal.

A week goes by. Stiles thinks a lot. He’s not good at emotional stuff. As a teenager, he’d been better at it than Scott by virtue of having less girlfriends to give him shit for it. Just one girl, really. One girl, time and again, to whom Stiles said _I love you_ for the first time at seven years old and will probably never stop. It’s only that he’s not a starstruck seven year old boy anymore, nor is he a horny teenager or a mopey college kid. Love is hard to quantify, hard to dissect and stick labeled toothpicks in like to a frog in a biology lab.

A week and a half after the fight that wasn’t a fight, Stiles drops by Lydia’s apartment. To his relief, she doesn’t hand him a box of his belongings even though he knows she’s already probably packed one. He hopes she puts the raspberry-lemon misshapen wolf-shaped soaps in it. When he leaves, he knows he’ll be back. But he’s never again going to go through the threshold of Lydia’s door as her boyfriend. He’s going to be her friend and her occasional partner in crime, but it’s never going to be the same.

It’s bittersweet, finally letting go of the dream he’s held onto for so long.

The front door is unlocked when he reaches it. Peter’s on the couch with something playing on the TV, but he lowers the volume when he sees Stiles walk in. Stiles hopes he doesn’t look as wrung-out as he feels, but he wouldn’t put money on it.

“Hey,” Stiles says, slumping into the couch. The screen is of a reality show that Peter likes to pretend he doesn’t watch, but Stiles doesn’t feel up to teasing him about it.

“The usual?” Peter asks, though not unkindly.

“Fuck off,” Stiles mutters.

Peter hands him his mug of tea.

Stiles takes a sip. Chamomile. It’s gross. He wants to say as much, but he’s not looking for a fight. He’s just… He wants Peter to understand what Stiles himself still doesn’t. “It’s not like the other times.” At Peter’s somewhat disbelieving hum, he adds, “I always thought it would be me and Lydia forever, but…”

Ever since Lydia had given him a millimeter, he’d found hope that his dreams could be reality one day. And they became so in some ways: he kissed her for the first time during their senior year, he took her to prom (they broke up again a week later), he called her from college, he swept her off her feet and got her to come back to him. They fucked. All over the place, in every position Stiles could manage without spraining himself and two where he did.

“And it is,” Peter sighs. “I’ve seen this exact thing before. How long did it take for you to get back together last time? Two months?” Peter’s voice doesn’t quite reach a comforting tone even as he says, “You’ll cool off, she’ll cool off, you’ll start to miss each other, and you’ll get back together.”

“We won’t this time.” Of that, Stiles is certain. All those other times, even at his lowest, he’d still wanted to fix things. Now, there’s just nothing left to fix unless it’s himself.

“She broke up with you?”

Stiles shakes his head. Lydia had brought it up, but when he finally understood why, he hadn’t contested it. “It was both of us.”

“That’s new,” Peter says.

“Yeah.” Stiles doesn’t know how to explain it, so he goes back to the start. Not the the very start, with him seeing a red-haired angel and declaring himself smitten, but to the beginning of the end. “Remember when I said Lydia asked me if I wanted to move in with her?”

“I do,” Peter replies, something odd in his tone. It’s gone in seconds when he huffs, “I’ve already told you three times that I’ll help with the moving if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“I don’t need any help,” Stiles mutters, heart not really in the banter. “I go to the gym. I lift.”

Peter gives Stiles’ arms a dubious look, but he says, “Then what is it?”

“I did agree, but I kept putting it off. At first I told her that I wasn’t ready—work, you know—and then there were my dad’s renovations and I couldn’t add my own move on top of them. Then my days off kept passing me by and I kept not doing it. Lydia finally confronted me about it. Said that if I didn’t want to move in with her, I needed a better reason than claiming I don’t have the time.” It’s hard to say it, but freeing in a way. “Eventually I just told her I don’t want to move in with her. Even if it would mean we’d spend more time together, even if work was closer.”

Peter gives him a lost kind of look. “Then what do you want?”

“I don’t know what I want,” Stiles tells him. “I thought I wanted Lydia. I didn’t realize how out of touch I’d gotten with myself until she asked that question and not a single bit of me wanted to go. I didn’t want to spend more than a night or two away from home.”

“You could make a home with her. Maybe not that apartment but—”

“I meant you.” There doesn’t seem to be any air left in the room, but when Peter looks like he’s too shocked to say anything, Stiles blurts out, “When I said home, I meant you. That’s always what I mean when I say it. I don’t know how to make myself want to be anywhere else.”

He must look as frantic as he feels, because Peter tugs him into a hug. Stiles lets him, gratefully slumping against him and reveling in Peter’s warmth. Fuck, it’s impossible to force himself to want to be anywhere else. The arrangement with Lydia had been perfect; he’d gone on dates, they fucked, and then he’d returned back home. It was only when Stiles tried to leave that he’d realized how much Peter factored into the equation of his happiness. That even without Lydia, he still has this. Maybe it’s friendship, maybe it’s love, all Stiles knows is that he’s too confused and too emotionally exhausted to figure it out.

A thought comes to him and Stiles blurts it out immediately. “Do you want me to move out?” He’s spent so much time thinking over the past week and a half, but he hadn’t considered what Peter wanted. Wrapped up in the hug as he is, he can direct the question to Peter’s chest. “Do you, um. You could move someone in if you wanted. If I’m gone.”

“I wouldn’t _rent_.” Peter says the word like it’s an affront to his very being, his hold tightening for a moment. “The list of people I’d even consider allowing to temporarily stay here is short.”

“I’m gonna assume you mean Malia and Cora and Derek.” Stiles shifts a little to a closer, more comfortable position, taking shameless advantage.

“Derek is debatable.”

Stiles huffs, amused despite himself. “Hey, you like quiet days in and Derek’s preferable way of communication is eyebrows. It’s perfect.”

“Derek is thankfully already a proud homeowner—even if it’s on that accursed piece of land—and will not be bringing himself or his questionable taste in girlfriends here.”

Girlfriends. Partners. That’s what Stiles really meant, but now that it’s his chance to raise the point, he’s unwilling to just say it. Peter’s never been the type for long-term partners anyway. In all the time Stiles has known him, his partners have usually lasted a night or a weekend. The few that lasted longer—one upwards of a month—had been perfectly nice, even if Stiles hadn’t liked any of them. They’d never seemed good enough for his friend, even as hot as they tended to be.

A few moments pass until Peter says, “I’ve never wanted you to leave. I only always assumed you would. After what you said two months ago, I assumed our arrangement would end soon. Lydia Martin has been your entire life ever since you met her.”

“Someone forced me to get a life outside of her.”

“By brute force?”

“By your—” Stiles flails, smacking his hand against the couch cushion at a bad angle. “—everything. Or maybe being here made me realize I didn’t imagine a future with Lydia like I used to. I used to have all these fantasies about our lives together, but I haven’t in a long time. Maybe since before we even got together this last time.” In retrospect, he should’ve realized it the moment he and Lydia had fallen into bed together for the first time since their last breakup and he’d left afterward so that he wouldn’t be late for his plans with Peter. It’s all so complicated yet simple, so many things adding up to a future Stiles doesn’t know how to imagine, but wants anyway. “If you’ll let me stay, I’ll stay.”

“Stay,” Peter says, his fingers carding through Stiles’ hair. It feels better than it has any right to feel. They stay like that for ages until Peter murmurs, “Damn all this,” so quietly that Stiles barely hears it. He tugs at Stiles’ shoulders.

At first Stiles just thinks he’s had enough of the half-cuddling hugging they’ve got going on, but Peter doesn’t let him go far. His hand slips up to cup the side of Stiles’ jaw and he leans in with one steady motion. Stiles doesn’t know what’s happening until it already is, until Peter’s lips are gently parting his own. A moment later, Peter’s lips are moving away. Stiles instinctively brings his head forward, but it’s not enough. Peter’s already far enough away for Stiles to see the horribly vulnerable look in his eyes.

“I want you—” Peter cuts himself off, a wry smile tugging at his lips. “I suppose that’s it. I want you in any—in every—way, and I want you to know that this is on the table. I know that even if you might be interested, you’re not ready now, but I’m not going to go another day without saying it. I won’t mention it again unless you bring it up, but I want you to know.”

Stiles swallows, a fragile wisp of an idea settling into his chest. The idea of staying here with Peter forever, not only as his friend but as a man who wakes up next to him, who tells Peter he loves him, who adopts a cat and maybe one day a kid with him. He’s not ready now. He might not be ready anytime soon. But eventually, “I’ll bring it up.”

“Alright,” Peter agrees, a small smile on his lips. “I’ll wait.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> I'm also on tumblr as @[crownwithoutstones](https://crownwithoutstones.tumblr.com/).


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